fourstorylimit:

These Are The Prices AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Charge For Cellphone Wiretaps

Holy fucking shit. They have made a business out of wiretapping cellphones. This reads like an a la carte menu.

• Wiretaps cost hundreds of dollars per target every month, generally paid at daily or monthly rates. To wiretap a customer’s phone, T-Mobile charges law enforcement a flat fee of $500 per target. Sprint’s wireless carrier Sprint Nextel requires police pay $400 per “market area” and per “technology” as well as a $10 per day fee, capped at $2,000. AT&T charges a $325 activation fee, plus $5 per day for data and $10 for audio. Verizon charges a $50 administrative fee plus $700 per month, per target.
• Data requests for voicemail or text messages cost extra.AT&T demands $150 for access to a target’s voicemail, while Verizon charges $50 for access to text messages. Sprint offers the most detailed breakdown of fees for various kinds of data on a phone, asking $120 for pictures or video, $60 for email, $60 for voice mail and $30 for text messages.

And then they try and pass that off as COGS recovery? 

“Fees are charged to law enforcement in other circumstances such as court ordered requests and it’s important to note that any fee charged is for recovery of cost required to support these law enforcement requests 24/7,” she writes.

I’m not buying that. That’s way to low of a price, and way to cleanly packaged. If these companies cared about their consumer and their privacy, they would be making it painful  and confusing to get access. They wouldn’t have a clean price structure. These companies want the government business. 

sunfoundation:

Consumer broadband speeds in the U.S. The NTIA and the FCC created the interactive National Broadband Map to visualize data about high-speed Internet.

How might the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger affect the future of wireless broadband? Tune in right now to a Senate hearing with Sunlight Live.